Canto Talk: Sitting On The Edge of the Sandbox, Biting My Tongue

Dear Readers: Last year, while I was recovering from a broken hip, I became engaged in the “Circle of Moms – Political Blogs” contents. I felt like the real winner, because I mad e several good friends among independent conservative mothers across the country. One of them, Katya of “Sitting at the Edge of the Sandbox, Biting my Tongue” will be joining us on Canto Talk this Thursday (Feb. 7th, 7 pm Pacific/9 pm Central/10 pm Eastern Standard Time, click here to listen).

Trying to decide whether to take my daughter to a Goth production of Prokofiev’s Cinderella is making me miserable. I’m not a big fan of sanitizing tales, but I’m just not sure a 5-year-old enjoy this particular version. I suspect the production is geared to grown children. It’s only natural that choreographers are catering to hipsters in a city where they outnumber kids.

I wrote about our local plastic bag ban a few weeks ago. Well, the other night during the dinner our 5-year-old told us that some man came over to talk to the kids about the ban at her elementary school assembly. The need to inform elementary school children about the ban is not immediately obvious to this parent.

The speaker told students that when people don’t properly dispose of plastic bags birds and animals may get caught in them or eat them and die. I’m sure he had a lot of other drivel to share, but that’s what our 5-year-old picked up on, naturally. Me and DH looked at each other. We talked about littering, and how all littering is bad, not just plastic bags. Fortunately, however, people in our town are responsible and can be trusted to put their garbage into garbage cans, even without the new law.

We also said that paper bags are not very good because the break often, and that people use plastic bags again and again, in their garbage cans and to pick up dogs’ poop. We told her that it was wrong to invite the guy who talks about why he supports the ban, but not invite anyone with a different point of view, because there are many sides to this story. DH said that we’d like to hear about what is going on at the assemblies, and that there will be lot of things she’ll hear in school, and that the most important are math, reading and writing. Everything else is just someone’s opinion.

I don’t think there was an age-appropriate way to explain that plastic bags production requires fewer resources and is, therefore, cleaner. So we didn’t go there. But the most important point was yet to be made. The reason we oppose the ban, we said, is because if some people think that paper is better, they can ask for paper, and if some people think that plastic is better, they can ask for plastic. Or if a store decides that they don’t want to give out plastic, they can stick with paper. This way everybody can do what they think is appropriate. My daughter looked at me for a second or two and gave me the most beautiful mischievous smile.

Katya also offers a savvy fashion perspective:

Michelle Obama’s inaugural get-ups weren’t attheireye-poppingbest. And yet in her usual display of opulence FLOTUS 44 went through something like twenty five changes, which, of course give plenty of fodder to your humble blogger.

Lets start with her pre-party children’s inaugural ensemble. While an ostrich might be preferable to a peacock, it’s still an ostrich. Hi-Lo hemline is easy to overdo, and if anyone knows about overdoing, it’s Michelle. Unfortunately, this McQueen shirt is one of those garments that one pretty much has to be a model to get away with.

FLOTUS might need a little extra room in the fabulous upper arm area

On to the outdoor daytime inaugural look. For the afternoon festivities MO wore a helmet and a pair of blood-stained gloves.

In order to create smart 21st century work force the Golden state heavily subsidizes education. Then we import programmers form India, and many of our homegrown engineers are also foreign-born. But it’s the American-born (and Hispanic) students that are having all the fun.

The recently passed Proposition 30 mandates a variety of tax hikes, some of them retroactive. It was sold statewide as a measure to help our beloved, hard-working, unionized, retired public school teachers. Now that the funding is secured interest groups are going after after it, which should be interesting:

Proposition 30′s victory at the polls may have ended the prospect of deep midyear budget cuts for California’s public universities, but students are in no mood to celebrate.

On Thursday, some of the very students who helped rally their campuses around the tax measure demonstrated across the Bay Area, demanding rollbacks to ever-rising tuition hikes and more space in overcrowded classes.

[…]

Young voters were considered critical to the measure’s success; polls released this fall by the Public Policy Institute of California found 70 percent supported it, compared to about half of all likely voters. Now, with deep budget cuts and much higher fees averted, student leaders have focused again on the bigger picture: ever-increasing tuition and fees and reduced courses and services.

Tax hike won’t solve the structural problems, eh? The funds the state is projected to collect are finite, and will diminish as businesses are closed and are driven out of state. Educational bureaucracies, on the other hand, can always expend. So ladyparts and their male companions are holding rallies, flexing their proverbial muscle, demanding their “fair share”. For instance, they are unhappy with the $372 fee on “superseniors” at CSU. Yep, $372.

I have an idea: instead of arguing over the sum of money required to pay each semester after the course load is complete, vote for robust economy. It helps when the foot soldiers of socialism are hungry and mean. They get a bone once in a while, like maybe dropping that $372 fee or the free Pill, but their lives will end in ruin. It doesn’t matter if the federal government bails out California. They will inhibit a country where opportunity diminished significantly and greedy politicians cannibalized their youthful energy. Their best hope is legal marijuana.